Roast Chicken with Mole Poblano, Homemade Tortillas and Roasted Sweet Potatoes

Show me a person who doesn’t like the movie Chocolat and I’ll show you a person with no joie de vivre, no heart. I always felt a little sheepish admitting that I do actually really love this movie–and in fact, would consider it among one of my favorites–because of the whole chocolate thing. The chocolate thing is merely the frosting on a cake that is–admittedly–mostly frosting; and which includes such lip smacking bonuses as sexy river pirate Johnny Depp, Grande Dame Judi Dench, Juliette Binoche with her perfect accent and perfectly accented in a red cape, draped in the gorgeous, textured folds of magical realism and small town politics in a story-book village. I felt slightly embarrassed, given my situation, that if I admitted my attachment to this movie, people might think I was equating myself with beautiful Vianne Rocher and her skill with people and chocolate. I worried about this until I discovered that most people actually (much to my disappointment) don’t think of this movie when they hear I make chocolate in a small village on the coast of Maine. Instead they say, “Oh, you make chocolate? Like Willy Wonka!”

I find this horrifying. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory was one of those movies that haunted me all through my adolescence. I equated the house with the edible wallpaper to a freaky haunted mansion, and the image of that girl blowing up like a huge blue beachball gave me nightmares for years. The remake that came out a few years ago, instead of erasing those images, just added to the pile. Johnny Depp’s Willy Wonka is, arguably, one of the creepiest movie characters of all time.

So now, when people walk into my tiny village cafe and admire my delicate handmade chocolates displayed on pretty antique cake plates, and, then, for some reason completely beyond reckoning, equate the scene with Willy Wonka, I say (with a casual shrug and as much off-handedness as I can muster), “Oh really? Most people say Juliette Binoche, but I guess Willy Wonka fits, too.” Which, of course, is a total lie–but in the biz, we call it marketing by power of suggestion.

Here’s the thing about Juliette Binoche’s character in Chocolat: Vianne is not just a staggeringly gorgeous chocolateur, but also an amazing cook. Who can forget the dinner party she throws for Armande? And that silky, dark mole she ladles over roasted hens. It is that singular image that inspired the following meal.

Later in this series, I will post my method for making homemade meat stock (there is no better winter kitchen activity than simmering a pot of roasted bones and vegetables on the stove). And I do recommend using a meat stock for the mole. I have made it with vegetable stock (Steve is a vegetarian), and it’s tasty, but the final product lacks the suaveness and body that a meat stock gives it.

Oh, one last thing: There is very little chocolate in mole (contrary to the common belief in this part of the world that mole is a chocolate sauce), but I do feel that the kind you use is, of course, important. Don’t worry if you don’t have Mexican chocolate on hand. But, even if you are not partial to sweet-ish sauces, don’t be tempted to use unsweetened chocolate. If you want to go out and buy Mexican chocolate, Ibarra (in the yellow, hexagonal-shaped box) is probably the most available. However, let me make a recommendation: Taza organic stone-ground chocolate, made in Massachusetts, has several wonderful Mexican-style chocolates. They also make fabulous regular chocolate. It’s VERY different, so don’t be expecting smooth Valrhona or anything. It’s gritty and strong; but immensely flavorful. It’s really a whole different kind of thing.

Mole Poblano (adapted for the limitations of my New England pantry from the Simple Red Mole recipe in Rick Bayless’s Mexican Kitchen, copyright 1996, Scribner Press)

makes roughly 6 cups

• 8 garlic cloves, skin on
• 8 ancho chiles, or other mild, medium-sized, dark red dried chiles
• !-1/2 t dried oregano
• 1/2 t black pepper
• cumin
• cloves
• About 6 c chicken or turkey stock
• 3 T olive oil
• 2 oz whole almonds (or cashews or peanuts, whatever you have on hand)
• 1 medium white or yellow onion, sliced
• 1/4 c raisins
• 1 fresh tomato, or 3-4 whole canned tomatoes
• 1/2 t cinnamon
• 1-1/2 oz Mexican chocolate (or semi/bittersweet chocolate)
• 2 slices white bread
• sugar

Method:

In a large cast-iron skillet, roast the garlic until it’s quite charred on the outside and slightly soft, inside. Do the same with the chiles: slice them open, remove the seeds and press flat for a few seconds, each side, on the hot skillet. They will blister and smoke slightly. Try not to burn them too bad. Peel the garlic and set aside. Tumble the toasted chiles into a bowl, cover with hot water and soak for 30 minutes. Drain and discard the water.

While the chiles are soaking, pan roast your tomatoes in the hot skillet, until the skins (or flesh, if using canned tomatoes) are black and blistered and they start to goo. Set aside and allow to cool.

Add some olive oil to the skillet and toast the nuts until they are golden. Remove to a separate bowl with a slotted spoon, and then add the onion to the skillet. Cook until very brown–stirring very little. With the slotted spoon, add the onion to the nuts. Add more oil to the pan, if necessary, and cook the raisins until they puff, and then fry the bread. Add all, along with the cooled, peeled tomato, to the bowl with the onions and nuts.

Next, in a food processor, grind the soaked chiles, garlic, oregano, black pepper, cumin, cloves and about 1/2 cup stock. Press the mixture through a mesh strainer into a bowl. Do strain the paste. If you don’t have a strainer, borrow one from a neighbor.

Don’t wash the bowl of the processor. Instead, dump in the nut/onion/etc. mixture, along with your grated chocolate and the cinnamon, and process with about 1 cup of the stock until it is smooth.

Heat up your skillet again, add a bit more oil, and when it is very hot, dump in your chile paste. Cook and stir like mad until the paste is quite dark and thick–about 5 minutes. Add the nut puree and do the same. Add the remaining stock, stir to blend, partially cover and simmer for about 45 minutes. Season with sugar and salt to taste.

Prepare the chicken

Ingredients:

• One whole roasting chicken, or 2-3 Cornish hens
• salt and pepper
• Mole Poblano

Method:

Heat your oven to 350 degrees.

Rinse, dry, then quarter the chicken. Separate the thighs from the drumsticks, and rub down all of it with salt and pepper.

Heat a little olive oil in a large, heavy skillet until it is very hot. Brown the chicken pieces on all sides, and remove to a large, buttered roasting pan. Pour the mole over the chicken, cover with foil, pop in the oven and cook for about an hour and a half, or until the meat is soft and a bit of it pulls very easily from the bones.

Roast the sweet potatoes

Ingredients:

• 4 large sweet potatoes
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Method:

While the chicken is roasting, peel and cut the sweet potatoes into 1-inch chunks. In a large bowl, toss them with a little olive oil, salt and pepper. Tumble them onto an oiled half sheet pan and roast until they are browned and soft–about 30-40 minutes.

Tortillas

Ingredients:

• 1-1/2 cups flour
• pinch of salt
• 2 T butter or oil
• water

Method:

Place flour, salt and butter into a food processor and whir until blended. Add water very slowly through the pour chute, until the ingredients come together in a ball. Wrap the dough in cellophane and allow to rest for 15-30 minutes.

Divide the dough into 6 pieces and, with a rolling pin, roll into thin disc. Cook in a dry skillet for a few minutes on each side, until slightly browned in places. Wrap in a towel and place in a basket.

Finishing

Serve the chicken on warmed plates, in a pool of sauce and sprinkled with toasted sesame seeds, with sweet potatoes and warm tortillas on the side.

Or pull the chicken from the bones, and stir it into the mole. Allow guests to make their own soft tacos with the shredded chicken, roasted sweet potatoes and some shredded lettuce or cabbage.

Creamy Oats with Dried Fig Syrup

Steel cut oats–sometimes called Irish oats–are the chopped up whole oat grain (also called a groat–I’m not kidding). The grain is not rolled, so it takes quite a bit longer to cook than rolled oats, but, as a result, has tons more flavor and a texture that is, at the same time, nubbly and creamy. This isn’t the instant mush I grew up on in suburban California–this is real, wholesome food that takes time and attention–and possibly even chewing.

Long ago, in an Oregon town famous for it’s Shakespeare Festival, I visited a restaurant that served the best steel cut oats I’ve ever had. I think they called them Tunisian–cooked with turmeric, cardamom and dried apricots. My own version isn’t quite so exotic, but is very adaptable to various tastes and appetites.

I have paired this recipe with a another for Fig Syrup. If you’re lucky enough to live in a place where fresh figs are available, do not be tempted to use the fresh fruit in place of the dry. Quite frankly, to demoralize a fresh fig in that way would be sacrilege. In my opinion, there is no food more perfect than a fresh, ripe fig–eaten in sumptuous bites, eyes, closed, heart humming. In fact, if there is a heaven, then I’m convinced that it is a place where I could exist solely on fresh figs; heavy, buttery Haas avocados; and raw oysters, straight from the sea. One wonders why I cook at all–relishing foods that have been no where near a kitchen. But I digress. It is winter, after all, when warmer climes and fresh foods exist primarily in our imaginations.

Anyhoo, where was I? Oh, yes, winter; when fresh fruit in this part of the world, is a scarcity. You don’t have to use figs–apples, pears, mango, even raisins (if you can stand what they look like after being rehydrated. Personally, I can’t do it. They remind me of huge bloated ticks). So with that lovely image in your mind, let’s get to it.

Kate’s Steel Cut Oats

Serves 2

Ingredients for oats:

• 1/2 c steel cut oats
• 1-1/2 c water or brewed, fragrant tea
• 1/2 c milk, soy milk or coconut milk (or stick with all water, increasing amount to 2 cups)
• 1 T butter, coconut oil or other vegetable oil
• sea salt

Method:

In a wide frying pan, heat the butter until it foams and then add oats. Toast the grains until lightly browned and nutty-smelling. Remove from heat.

While toasting the oats, heat the liquids until boiling. Reduce heat and add the toasted oats. If the oats have just come off the flame, keep in mind that the liquid will sputter and spit as you add them. It’s no big deal, just stand back so you don’t burn yourself.

Cook oats at a vigorous simmer for about 30-40 minutes. When the mixture thickens to a gravy-like consistency, add a pinch or two of salt. Stir frequently until the oats are done cooking. They will be creamy and slightly toothy.

Dried Fig Syrup

Use a strong honey, if you want, for this fragrant, sweet syrup. Even something as strong as chestnut honey, or pine honey would work. The idea is to taste the honey as much as the figs. This recipe makes quite a bit of syrup–so pour it into a jar and use it the next time you have oatmeal (or poundcake…or french toast…or ice cream…)

Ingredients for Dried Fig Syrup:

• 1/2 c whole, dried figs (I use Black Mission–but have used all kinds)
• water
• about 1/4 c honey
• 1/2 vanilla bean
• cinnamon
• cardamom

Method:

Slice figs in to plump discs, place in a saucepan and add enough water to cover. Split and scrape the seeds out of the vanilla bean, and add it, pod and all, along with a pinch of cinnamon and cardamom, to the pan. Simmer over a medium flame, pressing, crushing and mashing the figs as they soften. Add more water if mixture becomes too thick and begins to burn.

Cook until the figs are very soft–almost completely dissolved into the water. The mixture should look muddled and chunky. Add the honey, stir, and continue to cook. Add more water until the syrup is the desired consistency.

Taste it. When it’s done, it should taste strong–the kind of thing you just can’t eat on it’s own. Stir a spoonful into your bowl of oatmeal, and then add more to taste.

Polenta porridge

I find the deeper we get into winter, the later I sleep. I had this professor once who told me that your sleeping patterns go through phases–and that it’s common that you’ll wake up within 10 minutes of the same time every morning for a while, and then it will just all of the sudden shift. All summer, I’m up before dawn, baking for the cafe or making chocolate before it gets too warm. I find that I don’t even have to set my alarm. My eyes open automatically within a minute or two of 4 am, every day. In winter, true to my professor’s theory, my eyes open automatically at 7 or so, but then I loll in bed until 7:30 or 8:00. In the summer, I’m lucky if I’m able to eat a piece of toast before noon, and exist primarily on coffee and crumbs from the morning bake. In the winter, breakfast is a major part of my day–an event that could take hours, and very rarely consists of the same dish in the same week. I LOVE breakfast.

About a month ago, I ran out of oatmeal, a favorite morning meal at Chez Shaffer (say that 5 times fast), and, desperate for something warm and creamy, was forced to consider the cereal potentials of the other various grains in my pantry. I remembered a favorite breakfast of mine whenever I went over to my friend Ann’s house when I was growing up in California–a warm “cereal” of leftover white rice, milk and cinnamon. Or sometimes the leftover rice as it was, scooped up with pieces of nori. Having leftover rice in the fridge, I sat down to an attempt to relive those summer mornings at Ann’s. Apparently tastes change.

So the next morning, still sans oatmeal (the island store is open only 2 days a week, 2 hours at a time in the winter), I set out to discover something new. After several weeks of experimentation, I’ve come up with a porridge-style polenta that satisfies.

Polenta Porridge

serves 2

Ingredients:

• 1/2 c coarse polenta
• 1 13.5-14 oz can of coconut milk
• water
• various garnishes, including but not limited to: raisins, vanilla, nuts, banana, butter

Method:

Pour coconut milk into a glass measuring cup and add water until the mixture totals 2-1/4 cups. Pour this mixture, along with the polenta, into a saucepan and cook on the stove (or on the wood stove), stirring often, until the grains have bloomed and the cereal is the consistency of very thick gravy (20-30 minutes). Garnish with desired accoutrements.

I find, that if made with coconut milk, the cereal does not need to be further sweetened, but experiment to your own taste.

Winter food

This is a self-indulgent post.  I feel the need to fill my head with warm pleasant thoughts these days, as the winter seems long already and it’s only the beginning of January.  These are the kind of days when I like to put on my brightest apron, clean the kitchen until it sparkles, and embark upon a recipe that takes lots and lots of time, lots and lots of ingredients, and lots and lots of work.  Maybe because working in the kitchen is sort of a meditation for me.  All that time on focusing on something that will look beautiful and taste great–and then be gone forever, making room for the next tenuous masterpiece.  

So I thought a series of posts about winter food might fill the space for a while–take my mind off the economy, island drama, and all the other sad stories in the world right now.  This is food of the slowest kind: porridge, sauces, roasts, braises, deliciously flaky pastries and slow-leavened breads.  The kind that requires your full participation, your whole body.  The kind, that when it’s done, has changed you even before you take a bite. 

I am opening comments for this series, hoping that I’ll get some feedback from you about your experience with these recipes, or, that you’ll share your own favorite winter foods.

Old Year limbo

I officially began my life in food when I was 19.  I was hired as a dishwasher at Zachary’s restaurant in Santa Cruz, California; and thus joined a varied and dubiously moral crew of dishroom alums that have passed through the battered back door of that restaurant for more than 20 years.  Michael L–a burly, bearded hippie with a wild look in his crystal blue eyes–trained me to collect bus tubs from the dining room without pissing off the servers, run plates to the kitchen without attracting the cooks’ ire, and showed me how a good runner could collect a tub, run it back to the pit, empty, scrape and stack all the plates in it in less than 3 minutes flat.  

“Each plate should take exactly 5 seconds to scrape,” Michael instructed while wielding a giant rubber spatula stained with the trademark yellow of turmeric from the home fries Zachary’s was famous for.  

Though on that first day I was slightly frightened of Michael, he soon became the first member of the strange family I collected during the near decade I spent at Zach’s.  Many of us spent 10 years or more rising and falling through the ranks there–hovering in that comfortable limbo where we’re still growing up (having not done a very good job of it at home), and not quite ready to be adults.  As a result, my life at Zach’s seems to have imprinted my life in a very strange, profound and somewhat inappropriate way.  

For instance, most of my closest friends are people that were once employed at Zachary’s–or people that I met through other Zach’s employees (I met Steve because a fellow dishwasher was his housemate).  This is an example of a profound way I’ve been imprinted.  But then I also do this weird thing where instead of saying “your welcome,” I say, “Chewbacca,” which is a further roughened bastardization of what my friend Miguel sounded like when he said “You’re welcome,” as he passed food from the Zach’s kitchen.   So I say Chewbacca–involuntarily, mind you–instead of “You’re welcome,” which can be shockingly inappropriate, particularly if I’m speaking to a large, hairy stranger.

When one of the waiters from Zach’s moved to Japan, he told us in a letter that he had introduced his friends there to the Mike’s Mess–a highly caloric (and utterly delicious) dish of potatoes, cheese and eggs that the restaurant was most famous for (I say most famous for because Zach’s was also famous for other things that didn’t have anything to do with its food.  Like its highly unconventional wait staff–which ranged from California beach bunnies baring lots of skin and 70’s punks in combat boots; to college preps in button downs and patchouli wearing hippies in desperate need of a haircut).  ”The Mike’s Mess has made it to Japan,” he wrote.  At the time I read this, sitting over my breakfast in the restaurant staffroom, I remember feeling a little betrayed.  As if anything that existed with in the walls of the world that was Zach’s, could only exist there.  But later, after the wonderful concept of people eating a Mike’s Mess in Tokyo really sank in, I felt elated, and liberated.  All of the sudden, I had permission to own my experiences.  Zach’s Mike’s Mess, became as much mine, as, well, Mike’s, I guess.  Chewbacca became my way of saying You’re welcome, as well as Miguel’s (who, after years of the staff repeating what it sounded like he was saying, just started saying it and we gave up on the whole “you’re welcome” bit altogether).  

The Mike’s Mess travelled with me across the country and made brief cameos in restaurants and inns that I’ve worked in since. And so did the rest of my collective experiences and habits that make me who I am.  We are nothing if we aren’t the sum of the parts of our lives.

In this weird week between  Christmas and New Year’s, I can’t help but wonder which experiences from this past year will come together to build the person I become in 2009.  It’s something that you can’t predict or plan on.  It just happens, and all of the sudden you realize you’ve changed.  The world around you has morphed you–imprinted you, and in so doing, has, ironically, ensured your originality.   I call it Old Year limbo–the place between who we were and who we will become.  One more week of a sort of adolescence.  Enjoy it!